NEW YORK — If [movieperson id="365131"]Robert Pattinson[/movieperson] was the breakout hunk from “Twilight,” then [movie id="414921"]“New Moon”[/movie] is definitely [movieperson id="373803"]Taylor Lautner’s[/movieperson] time to shine. Sure, his muscles look great in the flick, and he makes for a pretty convincing werewolf, but he also has that “it” factor.

At the intimate NYC screening of “New Moon” on Thursday (November 19) — attended by Pattinson
, Kristen Stewart
and other franchise favorites — Lautner was definitely on his co-stars’ minds. The crew also only had praise for first-time “Twilight Saga” director Chris Weitz.

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“I loved it,” Kellan Lutz told MTV News of “New Moon.” “It was a really great movie. And I think it balances the love story and action very well. Taylor’s a movie star. Chris Weitz did a great job.”

Ashley Greene also couldn’t help but reiterate how fantastic it was to work with Weitz on the second film in the franchise. “I love it,” she gushed. “I think it’s so great. I think Chris Weitz just does a fantastic job. You know, it’s a completely different tone and a completely different story, and I think he did a really good job of giving us a transition into the next one.”

Weitz himself seemed genuinely pleased with the finished product, saying that it did just what he wanted it to do in terms of adapting the novel.

“I feel really good about the final product,” he said. “I feel it was as close to the final product as I could make it, which was an honest version of the book and something that a fan could appreciate. So it’s not made for any particular demographic, except for the reader of the book who wants to see it visualized.”